Northern Minnesota is famous for stargazing, and the further away from city lights the brighter they shine. Stargazers should be loving the Northern Lights, coupled with the Milky Way, that were illuminating the night this past week. The starry nights have been spectacular.
I do not stay up very late these days, so it is nice when the Northern Lights happen early in the evening. The best indicator is when a bit of a green glow is visible on the northern horizon after sunset. It might take a while before they start dancing around, and sometimes they change into an entire spectrum of colors.
I was always told that the Northern Lights were reflections off of the Polar Cap. Sounded good to me, but I’ve since learned the scientific reason is that they are gases colliding with the earth’s atmosphere. The atoms of gas are energized by the magnetic force and display different colors depending on their altitude. They can be seen year-round, but it seems like they are more common in the winter months. This is a great time of the year to be outside.
Lately, the forest critters have been busy scurrying around and enjoying the warm daytime weather. I saw a lynx over by Gunflint that was sitting, like cats do, in the middle of the road. The lynx quickly jumped into the woods as my truck approached. No surprise since they are usually pretty shy and do not stick around for long.
I stopped to check out the prints in the snow and they were very round overall, as well as the individual pads. Granted these prints were fresh, but the claw marks were very pronounced at the end of each pad. They eat mostly snowshoe hare, which have been very present lately. The hare are still white as snow, which means that we may not be done with winter just yet.
There have been a few moose licking the salt off of the Gunflint Trail at night. They like to loiter from the South Brule area up to mid-Trail, especially near Swamper Lake. Not too many years ago a person could say they counted over 10 moose on their way to town, but not anymore. Three is the most I have seen this winter while returning home from Grand Marais.
It has been fun seeing all of the different animals playing in the sun this week. The woods seem to be coming back to life. We have had this energetic pine marten near our job site on Gunflint Lake. Every time I use the saw outside, the marten screeches at me for a few minutes. It sounds like a catfight.
The marten was scaling around a dead cedar so quickly that I thought there might have been more than one, hard to say. She might have had a family nearby and she wanted to protect her turf. Either way it was pretty entertaining.
About 100 feet away from the pine marten was a deer kill site in the middle of the driveway. All that remained was some fur and blood. It could have been a couple of days old when I discovered it, but there was nothing else left. The bones and head were nowhere to be seen. The wolves did a very thorough job, and the lower echelon of the food chain cleaned up the rest.
Cory Christianson has worked as a fishing guide on the Gunflint Trail since 2000. If you have any fishing or wildlife reports or stories to share, send an email to: christiansoncory@hotmail.com or call 218-388- 0315. You can also visit Cory’s website at Gunflintfishingguide.com.
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